


An Understanding

by lionessvalenti



Category: Gilmore Girls, Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Book/Movie 2: Catching Fire, Gen, Quarter Quell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-02 18:37:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13324119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionessvalenti/pseuds/lionessvalenti
Summary: District 7 Victors, Lorelai and Johanna talk after the twist of the third Quarter Quell is announced.





	An Understanding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [isquinnabel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isquinnabel/gifts).



"I won't volunteer for you."

Johanna didn't look away as she spoke. She never did. It was one of the things Lorelai had admired about her. Her brutal honesty. Even after the games, after all these years, Lorelai still hid behind banter and wit. She'd been a dazzling showpiece for the Capitol. No one, not until Finnick Odair won, had been as clever and charming as Lorelai, and even now, she kept up the facade.

After the announcement of the Quarter Quell had been made, after the stages of grief, the denial, the anger, the fear, Lorelai left her house and went three doors down to Johanna's home. She didn't run, but she walked very briskly. There were no pleasantries, knowing what they were going to discuss. It was just a meeting in an empty room off the kitchen that was probably intended to be a dining room, but Johanna had no one to dine with, so there was nothing.

"Well, I won't volunteer for you," Lorelai said, sounding more like a child in this situation than the elder. No matter how much death she'd seen, or what the Capitol had done to her since the games, she had never quite lost her ability to sound petulant. It was a flaw. She was working on it. "How's that sound?"

"It sounds fine," Johanna replied crisply. "Now that we have an understanding."

Of course they had an understanding. They were the only living female Victors in District 7, and when it came to winning The Hunger Games, it didn't matter how many alliances you built, there was only one winner. And only one of them would go to the Quarter Quell.

Lorelai leaned back against the wall and slid to the floor. She and Johanna were opposites in every way, but she was one of the few people in all of Panem who understood what the games really were. Everyone could watch, but they'd never know it until they were in the arena.

Johanna sat down next to her, their shoulders just barely not touching. "How is she?"

"Scared," Lorelai said, staring straight ahead. The blue striped wallpaper was peeling in the corner of the room. "She's more scared of this than she is going to her own reapings. You grow up and of all the things you know, it's that your parents don't get sent to the games. I mean, I did, obviously, but she doesn't remember that."

Lorelai hadn't been the only teenage mother in Panem, but she was the first to be reaped with a one year old at home. Her narrative had been strong from the start. Win for her child, her baby who would otherwise grow up without a mother, and Lorelai was charming enough to pull it off. The people of the Capitol ate up her sympathetic story, and the images of a screaming teenager being pulled away from her baby as she was dragged out of the farewells seemed to somehow resonate with them, and she won her games not on a skill, but sympathy. While more of her competitors died from hypothermia than a blade, Lorelai had a lined sleeping bag and a warm coat. While they starved in a barren terrain, she almost always had dried meat and bread.

She was no longer a teenager with a sob story. Lorelai knew she wouldn't survive the games again.

"And you?" Johanna asked. "Are you scared?"

"Rory gets a year off from the reaping, and next year she'll be seventeen. That's all that matters. If she can make it through that one, she'll be free."

Johanna snorted. "She'll be a lot of things, but free isn't one of them. None of us are ever _free_. It all comes with a price, you know that."

Lorelai turned her face toward Johanna. It was difficult to look at her sometimes. Her gaze game with sharp edges and contempt, and Lorelai always looked away first. She hadn't been able to help Johanna, like she hadn't been able to help any of the other tributes she had mentored since her win. Johanna just happened to have more unadulterated rage than any of the other District 7 tributes in the last fifteen years and Lorelai could take no credit for that.

They had both sacrificed so much to reach this point. Surviving the games had only been the beginning. Johanna refused to be a pawn of the Capitol and she lost everything for it. She had no one, and while Lorelai had Rory, that meant she did whatever the Capitol wanted her to. It was a sick trade, but she made it in the hope that Rory wouldn't have to. Isn't that what parents are supposed to do? Sacrifice for their children?

"Am I an impossibly large dick because I really hope it's going to be you?" Lorelai asked.

This time, Johanna laughed. It was a humorless noise, full of disgust and rage, and maybe even sadness. "Well, I'm hoping it's going to be you."

Lorelai reached down and took Johanna's hand. She half expected Johanna to pull away, but she didn't. She held on, revealing a small crack in the wall she'd built. Lorelai smiled, more to herself than anyone. There wasn't much amusement behind it, but she was used to smiling through the fear. "I guess I am a dick, then."

And when Johanna's name was called at the reaping, Lorelai didn't say a word. Johanna might have killed her right there if she had. Like she said, they had an understanding.


End file.
